- Antony
ATS and the Wave of AI in Recruitment: Smart solutions for futuristic workforce management
The pandemic has triggered a paradigm shift in workplace technology. Pressured by a remote work culture and rapid globalization, the foundation of recruitment processes has become more complex than ever. While the age-old hiring process is breathing its last, where does the HR framework stand?
Globalization and remote work have left recruiters with heavy targets. Sourcing out, selecting, and adapting the best candidates at minimum costs has turned out to be a herculean task, given the limitations of physical space and in-person communication. Here is where AI or artificial intelligence acts as a boon in the hiring process.
The use of AI in recruitment software, like the applicant tracking system (ATS), helps organisations identify, attract, and recruit the best candidates. ATS fulfils the most common goals, like generating accurate data-driven decisions, decreasing investment time, sourcing out suitable candidates, etcetera ensuring an agile and streamlined hiring process.
Rise of AI-based Applications in Hiring & Recruitment
Lauded as the golden child of the e-revolution, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reinventing business processes through smart automation. In a pandemic-devastated work culture, AI’s dominance has permeated into the HR management processes as well.
The sting of the pandemic has induced a compelling need to increase recruiting efficiencies, whether it is handling large hiring numbers, applying the proper employer advertising message, or streamlining the candidate selection process.
The AI revolution is assisting HR teams through automated operational workflow as well as providing analytics by recognizing patterns and trends in data. Intelligent data has been proved rudimental in making informed employment decisions. This data-driven approach is particularly useful in the area of talent acquisition, where the process of "finding the perfect fit" has long been an interpretive one.
Benefits of AI in Recruitment Processes
Specific Candidate Search: AI resume scanning software allows the recruiters to target the required candidates, filtering on the basis of criteria like age, education, degree pursued, etc. Predictive analysis and automated ATS screenings help in gathering specific information and suitable candidates are chosen from the pool of applicants.
Faster Overall Process: Leaders in employee training predict a spike in the hiring volume by 2021, while the size of the recruiting teams might stay the same or even shrink. Recruiters will be expected to become more efficient by "doing more with less”. One of the most fundamental benefits of ai for recruiting is how much time it saves for your HR team. Manually reviewing applications is by far the most time-consuming component of the recruiting process, especially when a large percentage of the resumes received for a position are unqualified. Time-to-hire is reduced when certain aspects of the recruiting process are automated by AI talent matching, so you're less likely to lose top talent to faster-moving opponents.
Effective Character Check: The value of soft skills and personality traits cannot be ignored while recruiting a candidate. What if you could do a character check even before meeting the person? Yes, that’s possible with AI hiring tools! By observing patterns closely, AI tools for recruiting can predict how likely a candidate shall survive in the organization.
Systemized Interviews: AI can set up interview questions and provide results real quick. The outcome is based on certain traits or ai matching algorithms, which helps the recruiter to make a final decision. Plus, the ai tool for recruiting helps in interviewing numerous applicants within a short time span, thus speeding up the process.
Lower Sourcing Cost: By reducing redundant human processes and speeding up the search and selection procedures, AI hiring tools can tremendously cut down the amount of time invested for each applicant. Though incorporating AI into your recruiting process may seem to incur extra expenditures, it results in a more cost-effective and successful hiring funnel in the long run, and favors long-term ROI.
With AI matching algorithms, there will be a decreased need for recruiters, interviewers, and hiring staff, as well as a cut down on manual pre-screening and scheduling processes.
Removing Biases: According to lead job portals, a large number of applicants tend to get overlooked by hiring staff, mostly due to their educational qualifications or racial backgrounds. In numerous cases, gender bias is observed, where male applicants are preferred over female applicants.
AI algorithms are non-discriminatory as they read and observe the talent pool as a whole, not complying with human biases! With AI talent matching, diversity and inclusion find better places in the workplace. AI tools that are multilingual also help with a better accessible recruiting process and reaching over to a global talent pool.
The bottlenecks of AI-driven HR processes Just like any other technology, artificial intelligence has its cons, especially in the recruiting AI field.
Since it's not human, there can be a lack of personal touch in the entire hiring process through the HR AI tool. Although it makes the entire recruiting process quick and easy via AI platforms for recruiting candidates, the real-time communication between both parties - a strong element of human processes - can be absent.
However, the recruiters can overcome the issue by effectively utilizing the time saved to communicate with the selected candidates.
AI focuses on specific keywords and data points, filtering the available resumes and picking those that include such keywords. If a candidate’s resume doesn’t include the specific data of the hiring software, the person will be rejected automatically. Thus, AI resume screening solution could overlook efficient candidates.
As AI is still not all-encompassing and is fed by human processes, there are chances that over time, AI tools adopt human bias patterns. If not updated properly and regularly, AI based applications in hiring may tend to pick up on previous patterns.
Conclusion
While numerous small, medium, and large-scale companies have already taken to the new ‘intelligent workflow’ and adapted the recruitment software in their hiring process, many are yet to follow the trend.
Those who have adopted ATS tools for recruitment reap the benefits, with increased scalability and flexibility in the process. The advantages, as mentioned before, are too good to overlook. Recruiting software and AI-backed onboarding strategies help enhance your workforce quality, empower your HR team, and help your bottom line over time.
To take the leap towards a futuristic, AI-centric business workflow, know more about Zita’s AI-enabled Branded Career Portal. Leverage the most essential and flexible ATS features designed for start-ups, small, and medium businesses to upgrade your recruitment processes and save on person-hours and cost-per-hire. To know more reach us at here.